Hotel San Pedro de Majagua Cartagena

... alaska all the way down to Patagonia right in the South of Argentina, so it was nice to have some good company, she managed to persuade me that cycling is the best way to travel, so I agreed I would make my first cycling tour through Europe and go from there....when we were helping them take all of there luggage off the boat, it was all so heavy it was insane, I donīt know how they managed to cycle all the way from Alaska with all that stuff!

I have a confession to make ...

... a bit dissapointing (the people writing our giude book really need to try snorkelling in Australia if they think dead coral is interesting). Throwing tour boat anchors into coral, and running jet skis up and down probably isnīt helping.

Cartagena has been a little dissapointing in its over zealous fleecing of tourists, but overall we are sad to be leaving Colombia for our next stop Peru.

... that we would be catching a ferry. The port where we were catching it was just a few odd buildings setup to provide snacks such as empanadas, areipas and such. There didn’t seem to be any residential buildings nearby. I also noticed Chalupas and realized that this may be where you can catch the a Chalupa to Manague, which is what I previously thought might be an alternative travel option to the bus. Its clear now that it is not, although we could have ...

... school kids from the surrounding schools and government workers as the seat of the municipal government is located closeby. For this reason alone, that the colonial part is not just a theme park, I find Cartagen's colonial-ness to be one of the best.
After spending a few days in Cartagena with some of the people from the boat trip, we proceded to Taganga, a fishing village just east on the coast. Adding even more to my evidence that Colombia was like Mexico, Taganga was dry and ...

... streets where many horsedrawn carriages were being used (mainly for the tourists but still), made it feel like you were suddenly in Cartagena a hundered years ago, where women would have been squarking at each other over the balconies while beating their rugs or hanging out their washing... We had a light dins and then had to try and walk it off for a bit, and by darkest night it felt very romantic (well, it had the potential.. I was walking next to Stephanie!) and ...

... up line. The girls (or women, they claimed to be 29 and 30 years old but looked older) were a pair of rich Bogotanas with aftermarket accecories. They thought we didnt speak spanish so they started saying really suggestive things. It was really hard to pretend not to unterstand. After maybe an hour of chatting and swimming we arranged a date for the night. That night (after a thorough pregame) Jan (dutchman), Andres y Daniela (our friends from Bogota (they both spčak English)), and I ...

... the town in exchange for a ransom of 10 million pesos which he shipped back to England. These attacks prompted the Spanish to build a series of forts around the city including two forts that were built on each side of Bocachica Straight to protect the entrance to the harbor. There was a heavy chain strung between the two forts to prevent surprise attacks. Despite these ...

... As the sun set, our crew met in the lobby and set out for a night in the Southwest section of the city... grabbing a nice Argentine dinner at Quebracho (Gaia says it was the best Carpaccio ever - and for an Italian, that's saying something) and then hitting Café Del Mar...an outdoor bar/club located on top of the city's Eastern Wall. A few tables away, Las Colombianas sat entertaining some other dudes. Hicham, following our early conversations regarding the female attraction ...

... to the landscape.


The ride today is magnificent - as much cornering as you would get riding for a long weekend in the Alps but all in a "just right" degree of tropical warmth. Wrists, thumbs, back and legs are all ruined from 8 hours of continual acceleration and deceleration on the roads, but it is a pain well worth suffering.


About an hour out of Popayan we team up with a local rider who is on the final length of his South American odyssey - 3 months and 25 ...

... pirates. The city was sacked no fewer than five times, the most notable of which was led by Sir Francis Drake in 1586.

The Spanish responded by transforming Cartagena into an impregnable port. They constructed elaborate walls encircling the town and a chain of fortifications that helped save Cartagena from subsequent sieges.

Today, Cartagena has grown into a modern city and ...